Amazon is testing an ebook and audiobook subscription service called “Kindle Unlimited” that would cost $9.99 a month. According to pages that were pulled down, it will offer access to over 600,000 titles.

Amazon responded to the German Publishers and Booksellers Association’s antitrust complaint against it, saying it’s not delaying shipments on Bonnier titles but is instead holding fewer in stock. It also confirmed that it wants a larger commission on ebook sales.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/26/apple-tech-could-bring-digital-autographs-to-ebooks-movies-and-music-albums Book signings don’t have to go extinct in a digital era: Apple (s AAPL) has applied for a patent that would…

Restrictions on the use of portable electronics may be soon relaxed but how will the rules be enforced? It’s a sticky situation since phone sizes are getting close to tablets and you simply can’t tell what people are doing with their devices.

A federal judge has issued her injunction against Apple in the ebooks antitrust case. Notably, Apple will not be allowed to include most favored nation clauses in contracts in any ebook publishing contracts for five years, and it will have to stagger negotiations with the publishers who settled.

iOS reading platform Readmill announced three partnerships Friday. The Berlin-based startup is working with digital marketplace Gumroad, and has also partnered with U.K. companies Faber Factory and Firsty Group, which offer services to independent publishers and authors.

Ebooks accounted for nearly a quarter of the U.S. trade book business in 2012, according to statistics released Thursday by the Association of American Publishers. The ebook industry appears to be maturing, however, and triple-digit growth is likely a thing of the past.

A new report from Scholastic reveals that most U.S. children have still never read an ebook. Many of them — especially girls — want to, and kids also claim they’d read more for fun if they had more access to ebooks.

New stats from the Association of American Publishers provide a snapshot of publishers’ revenues through August 2012. While ebook revenue is still increasing, publishers are no longer seeing triple-digit growth in adult fiction and nonfiction ebooks.

Although it’s not clear exactly why, an Amazon customer in Norway has lost access to all of the books she bought with her Kindle — a healthy reminder of how with ebooks, we have very little actual control over something we have theoretically purchased and own.

Oyster, a new startup that wants to be the Spotify of books, announced it has raised $3 million led by Founders Fund. The money will help Oyster build a library that allows members to access an unlimited number of books for a monthly fee.

Google is adding some new features to its Android ebooks app, including highlighting and annotation, translation, dictionary definitions and geographic information. Google Play Books for iOS lacks these features for now.

Twenty-four percent of Indian adults with Internet access have bought an ebook. Now that group could get a lot bigger: Amazon has launched a standalone Kindle Store in India and is selling Kindle exclusively through Indian electronics chain Croma.

The Justice Department today answered 868 public comments it received in response to a controversial settlement over alleged price-fixing between Apple and publishers. The Department said it will not change the terms of the deal — and effectively told its critics to jump in the lake.

New data from PwC’s media report projects that e-books will make up 50 percent of the U.S. trade book market by 2016. What will happen in the rest of the world during that time? PwC gave paidContent an exclusive look at the new report’s e-book data.

The U.S State Department has signed a no-bid, $16.5 million contract with Amazon to provide Kindles — 2,500 of them to start — for its overseas programs. Why has the government decided the Kindle is the best e-reader — and what’s Amazon providing for that money?

Three months after Amazon yanked book distributor IPG’s 5,000 titles from the Kindle store in a fight over terms, the two companies have come to an agreement and Amazon has restored the titles. IPG’s letter to clients is below.

New stats from the Association of American Publishers show that kids’ and young adult e-book sales grew by triple digits in February, while adult e-book sales appeared to flatten. But that’s partly because so many adults are reading YA e-books like the “Hunger Games” trilogy.

In a move to build community and learn more about its customers, mid-sized publisher Sourcebooks is launching a romance e-book club that gives members e-books, discounts and access to online parties and live events for $9.99 for six months.

As almost every other form of media from newspapers to television becomes more conversational, books have remained relatively anti-social. Author and tech blogger Clive Thompson says he is excited about a future in which e-books are more social — but is that what readers want?

New transmedia publishing company Chafie Creative Group is trying to breathe life into fiction novels with a new iPad app called Immersedition, which will showcase the written word and storytelling while enhancing it with an array of interactive elements like maps, character profiles and videos.

If Kindle Fire is a disappointment as a tablet, then Kindle Touch is the epitome of e-book reading experience It’s simple, elegant, easy, lightweight and just great at what it’s supposed to do: offer up reading pleasure. I was impressed in the first couple of hours.

Facebook has acquired Push Pop Press, a San Francisco-based digital publishing platform startup in a move likely aimed at building out its forthcoming iPad app and strengthening its HTML5 development team.

As the disruption of the book industry continues, media companies are showing an increasing interest in “format shifting” by publishing their own e-books using content that they have already created, moves that are taking them into the growing market between full-length books and magazine articles.

Dat from a British analyst firm shows that the fight for e-book buyers and readers has two main contestants: Amazon and Apple. When it comes to the UK, Apple is winning. But with its new subscription plan, the market could suddenly shift.

After standing by while Amazon gleefully grew its e-book business on the iPad’s fertile soil, Apple recently enforced in-app purchasing — which should surprise no one. But Apple could grow to regret this move, as it could force Amazon to create an iTunes of its own.

A new study has found that 75 percent of college students prefer print textbooks over electronic versions. For researchers and web workers alike, printed books still provide significant advantages that go far beyond “new book smell” or intelligent margin notes made by a previous owner.

Amazon’s latest Kindle reader, just five months old, is already the company’s best selling product ever. Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, explains that Amazon can see many customers own both a Kindle device and an LCD tablet, underscoring Amazon’s wise move to make Kindle a platform.

Last week Google entered the e-book market with its web-based storefront and reader. Amazon promptly counterpunched with Kindle for Web. With a fast-moving market leader countering its every move, here are three ways Google can succeed in e-books. (GigaOM Pro subscription required.)

Amazon has rolled out a major new version of the Kindle app for Android that adds magazines and newspapers to the standard e-book fare. The app also adds shopping capability within the app, making it easier to browse for new content, and usability improvements.

Google today launched its long-awaited electronic book store, called simply Google eBooks, with more than 3 million titles and 4,000 publishers participating as partners. The move is likely to ramp up competition in the e-book market, which until now has been dominated by Amazon and Apple.

Many of us go to Barnes & Noble for the comfortable environment created by overstuffed chairs and (Starbucks) coffee. But there’s reason to worry that the cozy brick-and-mortar retailer might not be around forever. Who will fill the void if it goes the way of the dodo?

I’ve really been enjoying reading books using e-book readers. But while many e-readers are good at what they do, they are either tied to a specific vendor, or don’t support Adobe’s widely-used DRM. For reading such books, the free Bluefire Reader for iOS is now available.

When Amazon made the claim a few months ago that it owned a 70 to 80 percent share of the e-book market, we wouldn’t have blamed you for rolling your eyes. After all, the company has been criticized for its outlandish claims around e-book sales.

Amid talk surrounding the Apple-Google app store battle, many have overlooked Apple’s main advantage: the direct billing relationship with consumers thanks to iTunes. But Google now sees a new entry point to your wallet which hits right at the core strengths of Apple: music and books.

I really like the new (third-generation) Amazon Kindle as an e-book reader. It’s by far the best reading device that I’ve tried. But because it’s focused on being such a great e-reader, its usefulness for web working may be limited.

The company that publishes the Oxford English Dictionary said it may never appear in print again, thanks to a continuing decline in demand. Does it matter whether there is a printed version of a legendary reference work like the OED, or is online good enough?

There’s a lot of angst in the book industry about the rise of the e-book, but there is good news for those who care about books regardless of what form they take: a growing body of evidence shows that people with e-readers are reading more books.

Author and marketer Seth Godin, who has written 12 books, said in a weekend blog post that he will no longer publish traditional books but instead will distribute content via his blog and downloadable PDFs, because he says that the book industry has failed to evolve.

Perhaps the last refuge from social media is the book, where many of us go to find shelter from the smoggy haze of status updates, tweets and comments hanging over our media lives. But the solitary paradise known as the book is going social too.

Though e-books seem likely to induce consolidation amongst the major publishing houses, with the risk of leaving midlist authors out in the cold, one such author looks at the bright side: e-books represent an additional revenue stream and a chance to control his own destiny.

Years from now, when I tell my grandkids about this thing called print books, I’ll talk about the point in time that e-books won the war. Three defining events this week signaled that the era of physical bookstores has officially passed.

The number of “enhanced e-books” is currently few and far between, but this is quickly changing, as is our perception of the book itself. The world of publishing can expect some interesting times as authors look to new ways of expressing themselves.

Amazon’s new iPad and iPhone apps let users play audio and video clips within select book titles. The online retailer currently only offers about a dozen titles with such multimedia enhancements, but the update could mean that the next Kindle will support video playback as well.

It’s not just e-books: it’s new sites, services and products. It’s a blog or a newsletter or your first training course or that cool app you’ve been wishing someone would build. We’re often encouraged to try great new ways to generate continuous revenue streams.

My favorite day of the week — Friday — is here so I get to share the past week at Mobile Tech Manor with you for the 89th time. My how time flies when you’re having fun. I hate buying the same e-book twice, don’t you?

Dime novels were sold long ago as a serial, with a chapter released every so often for a nickel or a dime. The story was doled out in small pieces to hook the reader. Dime Novel Publishing is hoping to revive the concept in digital form.

The e-book industry is dominated by Amazon and Apple, but the game will change later when Google launches its online e-book service, Google Editions. The company will allow users to download books in multiple ways, opening another front in the ongoing war of Open vs. Closed.

The wonky “knowledge engine” Wolfram Alpha, under the leadership of new managing director Barak Berkowitz, is now moving from polishing its product to getting people to actually use it by changing up its distribution strategy.

Despite all of the attention they have gotten recently, there isn’t a universal e-book format, and we must contend with the many different types of e-books that are available. Here’s a rundown of the ebook formats that are available today and how to use them all.

Having gone toe-to-toe with Macmillan Publishing over e-book prices last month, only to retreat in the face of a consumer backlash, Amazon is once again talking tough with publishers. This time, however, the stakes are even higher for the Kindle-maker.

Amazon delivered today a beta of its free Kindle for BlackBerry e-book app, which provides access to more than 420,000 books. It marks the latest example of how the publishing industry is facing seminal changes. Are we on the verge of the death of quality content?

With Apple’s iPad due out in six weeks, Adobe is already on the outs for e-book DRM. Apple is likely to use its FairPlay system, but how limiting will it be? Might iBook store content be stuck on the iPad for a while?

Barnes & Noble ramps up production of the Nook e-Book reader so you can walk into their store to try and buy, starting this week. A firmware update also just hit and here’s a video showing you what to expect in version 1.2 for the Nook.

Amazon Kindle could have a tough time competing with upcoming converged devices. Is that why they just bought a touchscreen company? I’m not sure that adding a touchscreen alone to the Kindle will help. What else might Amazon have planned? Perhaps a different device?

Amazon has given in to book publisher Macmillan in a fight over e-book prices, in part because of the threat of competition from Apple’s iPad, but will actually make more money from e-books in the short term – even as it loses in the longer term.

Everyone seems prepared to declare the Kindle e-reader dead now that Apple has released the iPad, but Amazon can still put up a fight. Here are five simple ways that the Kindle can compete with the Apple tablet.